Goan Blueprint: How 'Nachom-ia Kumpasar' uncovered the Goan architects behind Bollywood

Picture Bombay, 1971. Inside the Venice nightclub at the Astoria Hotel — a stage Brubeck and Ellington once graced — a poster shows a man cradling a saxophone and a woman in a fitted gown, staring into each other's eyes. He is Chris Perry, the "Man with the Golden Trumpet," composer of the All India Radio signature tune. She is Lorna Cordeiro, a contralto critics compared to Bessie Smith and Shirley Bassey. They are India's most adored, most volatile musical couple.

This is the room Nachom-ia Kumpasar — "Let's Dance to the Rhythm" — walks you into.

At the heart of it is Dona, played by Palomi Ghosh, a Bengali actor who learned Konkani from scratch for the role. To prepare, she studied Goa's nightclub singers and rehearsed with live musicians to capture the loose rhythm of 1960s jazz clubs — earning her a Special Mention at the 62nd National Film Awards.

Bardroy Barretto's 2014 Konkani film is, on its surface, a love story. Lorna refused permission for a biopic, so he fictionalised the arc and re-recorded the songs with the care of a man building a reliquary. But really, it's about a sound: a tribe of Goan Catholic musicians — Chic Chocolate, Anthony Gonsalves, Frank Fernand and Perry himself — who slipped jazz, fado and cha-cha-cha into Bollywood's golden-age orchestras, only to be erased from the credits. 

Nachom-ia Kumpasar threads over twenty classic Konkani songs into its story, all re-recorded by Ronnie Monserrate. Born into Parel's Goan jazz dynasty, Monserrate was also the man who coaxed Lorna out of two decades of silence in 1995. 

The film is its own kind of miracle: crowd-funded by friends, it bypassed multiplexes entirely — Barretto shipped tickets by bus to Goan villages — and almost single-handedly revived an industry releasing barely two films a year.

It is, by every measure, the most decorated Konkani film ever made: twenty-four international wins, three National Awards, and a 2016 Oscars shortlist for Best Picture and Best Original Score.